Friday, February 9th--How will you welcome in Shabbat??

February is a month dedicated to Jewish Disability Awareness & Inclusion. For The Village Temple, we have dedicated ourselves to a full year of deepening our understanding of visible and invisible disabilities. As part of the UJA congregational cohort on disabilities, we are striving to make our sanctuary, prayer books and general facility more welcoming to people with disabilities.

Each year The Village Temple dedicates a Kabbalat Shabbat service to deepening our disabilities awareness.

Tonight we will welcome Xian Horn--a joyful, half- Asian, half-Jews woman with cerebral palsy. Xian is teacher, speaker, advocate and blogger. Xian has run vocational workshops for the Mayor's Office, she has spoken at the UN and serves as a member of the selection committee for the ReelAbilities Film Festival. Most recently Xian spearheads Changeblazer, Inc--working with organization looking to diversify and aid the underserved--especially those with disabilities.

This past year Xian was named one of the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century by Women's eNews.

PLEASE JOIN US TONIGHT AT 6:45 AND WELCOME XIAN INTO OUR TEMPLE FAMILY.

About the author

Rabbi Deborah A. Hirsch joined The Village Temple as our rabbi on July 1, 2016. Though she is a native of Chicago, Rabbi Hirsch has spent her entire rabbinic career in the metro New York area, most recently as senior rabbi at Congregation Shaaray Tefila, where she has served as clergy for the past six years. In 2000, Rabbi Hirsch joined the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), where she was the regional director for the Greater New York Council of Reform Synagogues. In 2003, she became the URJ director of regions and supervised the Union's regional structure throughout North America.
Previously she served as rabbi at East End Temple in Manhattan for 15 years.
She has been active in the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) for many years, serving as finance officer, chair of the Nominating Committee, and chair of the Audit Committee. Rabbi Hirsch has also been a faculty member at Eisner, Crane Lake and Kutz Camps. She was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1982, received her Doctor of Ministry there in 1997, and was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the same institution in 2007.